kieran

i survived. i’m thriving. he/they

[kieransthoughts]

i’m good just the way i am, the way i’ve always been. i am worthy of being loved. i deserve to be loved for who i am, not what i do. i’m relearning what love is.

[kieransthoughts]

austin,

it’s finally hitting me that you’re gone. you’re really dead. it’s insane and it’s fucked and it hurts so unbelievably bad. i miss you so fucking much.

i’m sitting in my room. your room. our room in our home. there’s still a hole in the closet doors that G never replaced from the night you tried to run your car off the bridge over the kilpatrick. if i focus hard enough i can almost smell the weed we used to smoke late at night during the summer of 16. i can almost feel bohdi lying against my side on your floor. you’re both gone. i can almost taste the first undertow you made me. the gin and tonic. everything is hitting and i couldn’t run from it if i tried.

i wish you were here. i wish you were here and you’re not. i wish i had picked up the phone when you last called but i didn’t and now you’ll never pick up the phone again. i wish i could’ve helped you. i wish i could’ve helped you. I wish i helped. I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you the way you needed.

i was talking to my therapist the other day about the (recovered?) alcoholics in my life that have gone to AA. she mentioned CBT-based programs for substance abuse as an alternative and it broke me because you needed that so bad and the resources were at my fingertips, but I didn’t know.

it hurts so bad that I’ve lost my big brother the way I almost lost my mom. i’ve watched adults drink themselves into stupors during month-long binges forever. i watched my mom drink herself into delirium and god, I can smell the scent of death. i thought if she survived with virtually no liver, then surely you’d be okay, right? wrong. you’re dead. you’re gone. i don’t think anything could have ever prepared me for you to just be gone. but now you are.

god. I’ve hated the smell of alcohol my entire life. I’d grin and bear it on new years’ eves in high school. during colleges parties the year i almost lost myself. i find it revolting now. i feel sick just thinking about it. i don’t know if I’ll be able to sip it ever again. looking at my roommate’s bottle of vodka on the counter makes it feel silly. how could a clear little unassuming liquid cause so much harm?

I’m tired and crashing and letting myself slip into the numbness a bit because I can’t sit in this 24/7. I miss you. goodnight.

kieran

[kieransthoughts]

grief feels like sitting on my grandmother’s office floor sobbing my heart out in the dark with the knowledge that my mother may die. it feels like watching someone fall into illness—drink themselves to death—with no control, just an inevitability. it feels like looking into the past and watching myself fall into a pit and knowing that I was supposed to fall into that pit but still wishing I could stop it. wishing I had the power to transcend time—transcend my own nature.

grief feels like falling in love in reverse. an accident, like I missed the top step and I’m tripping down the entire flight of stairs. I met you by accident and I fell in love with you by accident and I’m grieving you by accident and the moment I let gravity take control was the moment everything fell to pieces.

grieving feels like distillation. every time I fall in love and fall out of love and fall in love again I find something new in myself—for a moment I’m looking in the mirror and the world zooms in on an expression that’s so purely me. I’m lying on the ground by myself because gravity is gravity and there’s no universe where I learn to fly but I keep throwing myself off that cliff because hope feels like a drug that I’ll never not consume.

grieving you was an accident and yet an inevitability at the same time. if grieving is transmutation then I lost myself ages ago, but I feel him every moment I laugh and cry and smile and rage. I’ll never return to the moment my foot met gravity but I will feel it for the rest of my life.

I’ll remember grieving you when I fall in love again or when my cat dies, the same way I remember all the loves I’ve ever grieved while I grieve you. I’ll remember falling asleep entrenched in your love the same way I remember being 15 and the joy of falling in love while playing video games. I’ll remember your voice the same way I still feel my dog’s snores against my skin even though he died years ago. I’ll love and I’ll grieve and I’ll love and I’ll grieve and in each of those moments I’ll carry you with me. it’s inevitable.

[conscious-love]

Those who have found the source of love within themselves are no longer in need of love. And they will be loved. They will love for no other reason but simply because they have too much of it — just as a rain cloud wants to rain, just as a flower wants to release its fragrance, with no desire to get anything. The reward of love is in loving, not in getting love.

Osho

[warm-autumn-evenings]

choosing to forgive myself, choosing to return to love and compassion, choosing to let go of unhealthy coping mechanisms and move to healthier ones, choosing to stay alive. over and over and over again. as many times as it takes.

[forlornalbatross]

“Revere the softness of an authentic love while it’s with you & around you because true genuine love only comes as a limited edition & in most cases it’s extraordinarily extraordinaire to be found ordinarily -”

— D C de Oliveira |Hēsychazō, Recherché | January 17, 2023 | Tuesday, 11.10am

[warm-autumn-evenings]

changing every “i should have known better” to “i know better now”. i will not judge past versions of me through the lens of who i am now.

[stay-close]

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

— Henry David Thoreau

[cupidofcaravaggio]

therapy isn’t enough, i need to go to the woods because I wish to live deliberately

[seighart]

“I love you in every season, through all the changes in your soul. I love you every month and I would love you on February 30th without hesitation. My love for you reaches time that doesn't exist.”

[victim4life]

You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.

Edwin Louis Cole

[matheadouglase]

hello gorgeous friends! this poem is about how we interpret our thoughts and how those thoughts can turn into beliefs. with love, m x

[alittolatte]

“today i caught the sun dancing on my skin and she reminded me that i’ve never needed anyone’s permission to glow from within”

— genevieve.v

[gauravsksk]

i'm gonna come sit next to you, hold your hands, look in your eyes as your eyelids droop, do those little thumb rubs, grab you by the chin and start placing sweet kisses all over your face is what i only wanna do as a sin.

[cxtthroatt]

“i see the way your eyes glint for me, your fantasies and dreams speak to me when you look like that. i know you have butterflies right now, i know you want the very atoms of our skin to meet. so why don’t i comfort these little butterflies? stroke them with my two fingers? stroke their pretty wings while you sing me a pretty song. i think they’d like that a lot. my butterflies like your music.”

[nothingbutloveforyou]

you deserve someone who is gentle with you and your feelings

[er3to]

i want to kiss so badly.

the feeling of your girl's hips against your own as you sigh into each other? unparalleled and necessary for life. when she slowly starts to kiss you more lustfully and full of desire rather than sweetly, when she's sighing & moving against you & she's grabbing your cheek to tilt your lips toward hers better, when she kisses your neck while stroking your cheek with her thumb...

the idea of her touching the bare skin under my sweater makes my heart beat in syllables of her names. she should kiss me desperately, curve into me like sculptors did aphrodite's. she should kiss my collarbone and whisper sweet nothings into me.

i want to kiss so badly. (but still give me an annotated book and a love letter.)

— always, erato, your deity <3